


When In a Mirrored Room

by DollyPop



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Angst, F/M, Introspection, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 19:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4973659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DollyPop/pseuds/DollyPop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last time Marie had talked to her Lord, she had looked Death in the eye and denied him his bloodlust. She had put herself between God himself and Stein. She had stared him down with her chin lifted and her eye sparking. </p><p>Now, she stands in the bathroom, looking at her reflection, readying herself to plead with her God. </p><p>She just needed a second to herself. She just needed to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When In a Mirrored Room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TigerMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerMoon/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Color of Sky and Rain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/745110) by [TigerMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerMoon/pseuds/TigerMoon). 



  
_"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth._

_It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,_

_always perseveres."_

  
\---------

Her hands were shaking. She wasn’t in a profession where they had to be steady, but she’d never seen them so jittery, before, and it scared her to think that she was unraveling. At a time like then, when everyone else was crumbling, she was supposed to be the pillar. 

The bathroom was empty. Azusa had long since left, coming to her to warn what Stein had done, only to learn that Marie knew. Knew before she brought him back. Knew before she stepped between him and Death himself, knew before she looked God, Death, her Lord in the eyes and lifted her chin and told him without words that it wasn’t in his hands that she was putting herself.

She was once Death’s Scythe. She once had that title. 

She wasn’t, anymore. 

Azusa had only looked at her, horrified. For Marie to have been ignorant, bringing Stein back, defending him: then she could be excused. Absolved. But the horror was thick in her best friend’s voice when she realized that there was no ignorance, that Marie had the knowledge in more ways than one: in a creased letter with no tear-marks on it, in her brain, playing on repeat, in the darkness when she closed her eye.

“After what he did-“

And what could Marie say? She could only look at her friend as the composure on her face cracked, as Azusa, Queen of the Tattletales, felt the knowledge seep into her. 

Was there anything to be said between them, after that? Yes. There was everything. But not then. 

Marie didn’t want to leave her spot at the sink, staring at herself into the mirror. Perhaps Death was looking at her, even then. Perhaps Tezca was, all knowing, silent. She felt as though she was flayed down the symmetry line, all of her exposed: raw meat, unwavering faith, an electric soul.

What difference would it make? She could feel that everyone who knew thought her insane, lovesick, fatalistically loyal. She couldn’t help it: loving him was so deep in her, so natural. She knew Stein, knew him to the bones, to the marrow, to the fractures of his soul. Stepping into his mind where everything was screaming, ablaze, alive, inflamed: she’d seen all of him. Known the crime he’d committed, crimes. 

He was still Stein, though. It should have changed everything, the truth, but it didn’t. Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud, to even say it in her head. She had been looking into the mirror for the past twenty minutes, willing herself to bring it to light, trying to force her vocal chords to cooperate. 

She loved. . .loves a man who was so unforgivable to everyone else. 

And then, there was that thought, as well. Whether she forgave him. When they had walked through the desert, walked back to their once-Eden, to the DWMA he had fallen from, aligning himself with the Snake Woman, it felt so intimate. They were the only two people there who were awake, walking through the barren world on their way to face the judgments of a Lord she knew would have a hard time being merciful. 

She had held Stein’s hand. She had touched him. She couldn’t find it in her to hold what he had done against him, to string him up, to leave him to the wolves. They were partners: they took care of one another. She’d walk worlds for him. Had walked worlds for him.

She’d do it again, too. 

She knew God wouldn’t want her back. Not when she would still cradle Stein, not when she was willing to shutter his soul away with her own in her ribcage. Not when she would hold his heart beneath her sternum like a second heartbeat. No, God wouldn’t want either of them. They weren’t welcome, anymore. And she cannot blame him, Lord Death. When she had been there before she knew, when she had given her wavelength to expose all of Spirit, to try to heal him, it was hard not to feel just how much connection her God felt with Spirit.

The Reaper and his Scythe. How had she not seen it, before? Weren’t they ever together in every depiction? 

Wouldn’t she try to slaughter anyone who did to Stein what he had done to Spirit, too? Couldn’t she understand?

She bit her lip, breathing hard through her nose. “What he had done.”

Couldn’t she just say it? Admit it to herself? She was in love with a man who. . .

She couldn’t meet her own eye. Marie looked down at the white sink, the chrome faucet glinting beneath the flickering lights. Something in her chest clenched and she brought her hand to her throat, feeling as though she were going to choke. She could still feel the electric static running down her spine from when he’d shocked her with his wavelength attack. She could still remember the pain when he’d grabbed her breast, pulled her hair, thrown her about. 

_“I wanted **you**!”_

She swallowed thickly. It felt like a dodged bullet, when he said it. It was a dodged bullet, and yet it still seemed as though shrapnel had collected in her belly, a hook in her throat. 

_“I wanted to go after you first, Marie! He wouldn’t – he **couldn’t** hurt you, not **you**!”_

But others. Not her but others. She shouldn’t see the romance in what he said, shouldn’t have felt her heart stutter. This was Stein: she’d stood by him when he was revealed to have cut Spirit open, when they were kids. She’d defended him from everyone who let the word “freak” spill from their mouths. She’d gotten more detentions than she could ever count in her fierce protection, in the adoration she’d kept in her chest since she was twelve years old. 

She looked back into the mirror. She had a responsibility. She had to face it, she had to say it. Knowing, that was one thing. Saying it would make it so much more real and she owed herself, Stein, Spirit that much, at least. 

_“There’s something wrong with me, Marie, you have to **leave** -“_

But she couldn’t, could she? She wouldn’t. 

That was important. She had to remember how important that was, the distinction between what she could and would not do. 

What she has done.

She stands in a room of mirrors, windows for her God to look at her, to judge her, and she does it willingly. Marie lifts her chin once more, looks at herself in the mirror. 

She had stood in front of the man she adored, adores, and stared her Lord down as best she could, put herself between bloodlust and Stein, shielded him with her very body at its most vulnerable. She had resonated with Stein in his holding cell because she had a soul made of electric wire and iron and he needed, wanted, the comfort it could bring, the foundation, the stability. 

She _could_ say it, what he had done. Had read it though she wanted to skip the letters over.

But she wouldn’t. Not then. 

She didn’t have much time left. It was getting late and she had to request another meeting with Death, plead for a case that she knew could not, should not be swept beneath a rug. It would get messy, she knew. Politics. War. The destruction that had happened. The DWMA had to answer, would answer, and questions would be raised. The fight that had been reported, Stein’s crimes, what he had done, what he had done, _what had he done_?

There needed to be another conversation between her and her Lord before then. One more voice for Stein, one more argument. More requests for privileges, for comforts. Lord Death wanted one reason not to kill him immediately when they first stepped in and she had given it. 

The Lord would need far more than one to keep Stein’s blood off of his hands. It was a good thing that she had several, all collected inside of her like the folded notes she’d written to the man she was defending, when they were still kids. Those notes she never gave him.

_“He'd kill Shinigami himself before he'd let me hurt you!”_

There was goodness in him. He was still a good man. _(Was he? How could she think that, knowing what she knew? Knowing what she would not vocalize? Knowing?)_ He was. To her. To be a good man to someone, to anyone, that still counted, in her book. Only the worthy could lift her and he’d held her in his palm as naturally as in the lore. And how hard she’d fought to let him help the medical staff? How impressed everyone had been when he tended to the injured with an ease that seemed effortless, with hands that could make miracles. 

But he seemed so hollow when she went to bring him his MREs. She didn’t take back how she thought, before. He needed someone on his side. 

_(And yet, every inch of her screamed. Spirit. Spirit. He was her friend. He had been her friend. She wanted to hide him away in a world where nothing hurt him. Her mind flashed to when he had thrashed in his sleep, in his hospital bed, and they had grudgingly asked if she could donate her wavelength. She didn't know if she should have been allowed the privilege of even seeing him.)_

Whether Stein thought he deserved an advocate, a partner, or no, she did. She tried so hard when she was around him to be cheerful, to smile, to look on the bright side. Even if there really wasn’t one, she would make one. She had a heart the shape of a hammer. She knew how to illuminate every patch of darkness. 

She’d made bright sides before. She’d gladly make them for Stein. Was making them for him. And he was trying, in return. He’d kissed her cheek, his stubble rough on her skin. He’d held her hand, he’d held her. He’d listened to her, took her advice.

_“All you have to do is tell everyone the truth. Nothing to worry about.”_

She’d have to hear it. The truth. Again.

She’d stand by him as it came to the open, the words fluttering, thumping through the air and through her and through Spirit and Stein and Lord Death. She’d face it. She would. She could. And she c/would still stand next to him, afterward.

Her favorite word as a child had been “always”. She thinks it still is. 

_“And I'll be by your side the whole way.”_

When she looked in the mirror, her amber eye looked tired. She looked tired. And she was, so tired. But she had always been a fighter, always knew how to kick, how to scream, how to lay her faith onto the ground like a circle of salt, her greatest protection. 

In her reflection, she notes the way her throat moves when she swallowes thickly. Her palm was still at her neck. 

_“I promise.”_

Her hands were shaking.

**Author's Note:**

> So, not going to lie, I have been wanting to write this fic for a very long time! TigerMoon is so insanely talented, and I remember reading "The Color of Sky and Rain" and just being absolutely in awe. I've read it multiple times (and I know that makes me super dweeby, admitting that) but I couldn't help but constantly feel moved by it, coming back to it time and again!
> 
> If you haven't read it: please, PLEASE do yourself a favor and read it.
> 
> Of all the fics in Soul Eater, of all the fics I've read in the entire fandom, it is firmly one of the best. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't read it.


End file.
